There was a time when just the act of declaring the truth that all men are created equal before God was enough to get your head broken. From the Birmingham News, a collection of photos that were not published when they were taken for a variety of reasons.
Look at the pictures, read the articles.
I have been reading Angry Bear for a while. Angry Bear is great economic information and analysis. Check them out.
Via CalculatedRisk comes Reassessing Hard Landing Risks written by David A. Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch. I?m calling David a bear as he is not buying all the Pollyanna stories as to how great the U.S. economy is doing.
There is a lot of material here but I especially liked his comments about the labor market:
In fact, when we canvassed investors as to which statistic it was that altered their perceptions to such a degree, the vast majority said it was the drop in the January unemployment rate to 4.7% from 4.9% ? the laggiest of the lagging indicators. Never mind that the entire decline was due to part-time youth unemployment sliding (in a sign of seasonal maladjustment), or that the labor force shrank for the third time in the past four months ? which is not what the textbooks tell you should be happening when the labor market is brimming with confidence ? To this, all we have to say is that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were a total of 4.1 million job postings available in December. Yet there were well over seven million unemployed people actively looking for work (and another five million who would engage in a job search if they thought it would lead to success). So, you can?t blindly look at a 4.7% unemployment rate and draw the conclusion that the labor market is tight enough to generate accelerating wage growth when there are as many as three potential job seekers out there for every available position. This still sounds like an excess labor supply backdrop to us, one that is inherently disinflationary, and a key reason why we are concerned that the Fed is on the precipice of a policy mistake if it raises rates much further. We have yet to hear from one policymaker as to how it can possibly be that this is a fully-employed economy when practically every measure of organic work-derived income (wages/salaries from the NIPA accounts; employment cost index; unit labor costs) is running at slower rates now than they were this time last year. And, the fact that real compensation growth per hour managed to decline in each of the past three quarters to stand at -0.4% year-on-year, something that barely happens once every decade, is hardly a trend one would expect from an economy supposedly operating at full employment.
MSNBC has a short article up about The Widow Anna Nicole Smith and her case before the Supreme Court. The Bush Administration is on her side in this issue.
I’m lovin’ it.
Trent Lott has had a love/hate/hate relationship with the White House since he lost his leadership position over his loose lips. At Crooks and Liars, there is a video from Hardball where Lott says that he will override Bush’s veto on the ports issue. Snarky movie paraphrase:
Is this the end of Rove?
Paul Rudnick, writing in The New Yorker, has some fun with the Vatican’s recent pronouncements about homosexuality and the priesthood.
A MEMO FROM THE VATICAN
by PAUL RUDNICKFrom: His Holiness
To: All seminaries
Subject: While the Church approves of ordaining “transitory” homosexuals—that is, those men willing to take subways and buses rather than taxis—according to our most recent directive we “cannot admit to the priesthood those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’ ” The following questionnaire should be used to help identify and root out such truly committed homosexuals.
1. Jesus would have been a bad boyfriend because:
(a) He wasn’t gay or sexual in any way, so the question is disgusting.
(b) He would have cared about everyone, but not enough about you.
(c) He wasn’t really Jewish.
Steve Cleamons, at The Washington Note has as good a write up of the Bush team’s coup in progress.
Nonetheless, Bush has become the epitome of a Roman dictator in the 21st century in his assertion of “unitary executive” authority which this White House has argued has “inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances.” The problem is that unlike Rome, where the Senate granted the dictator great powers, Congress has not — in fact — given Bush the authority to operate beyond his Constitutional authority. Bush has, instead, asserted that authority and taunted Congress to stop him.
Read the whole thing.
Blog alert: The Reality-Based Community uses the quip from Patrick Moynihan in its masthead.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Check them out.
Suzanne Nossel over at Democracy Arsenal:
The only thing worse than Iraq as a failed state is Iraq as a failed state with 130,000 Americans living there.
IBM’s compiler for the Cell processor is called the Octopiler. Check it out.
Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi first came to America as an emissary of the Taliban. He is now a student at Yale. The New York Times has his story. Money quote:
“You have to be reasonable to live in America,” he said. “Everything here is based on reason. Even the essays you write for class. Back home you have to talk about religion and culture, and you can win any argument if you bring up the Islamic argument. You can’t reason against religion. But you cannot change Afghanistan overnight. You can’t bring the Enlightenment overnight.”